Extremists are a tiny fraction of the world’s Muslims, and your chances of dying in a terrorist attack are miniscule.

An undeniably troubling trend in America is a strain of Islamophobia that I have not seen in such magnitude since just after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The reactions on social media to movies like “American Sniper” have brought out the seemingly deep-seated bigotry that still exists from Americans toward Islam.

I am not pro-Islam, nor pro-Christian; I am agnostic, and choose to look beyond the necessity for religion at all in a world that is quietly going mad. However, my nose for hogwash when it comes to hypocrisy, the media and our government has caught a slight stench as of late, and it’s something that cannot be ignored.

First, let’s look at some simple statistics for those who are uneasy about the alleged threat of Islam: Islam has roughly 1.6 billion followers, which is second only to Christianity in the world. Groups like Al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State group, commonly called ISIS, represent an extremely small and distorted portion of this religion, much like extremist Christian sects do — lest we forget events like the Wisconsin Sikh Temple massacre in Oak Creek, where a Christian extremist gunned down six innocent Sikhs. My point is that if every Muslim were a terrorist, I would think the at-most figure of 31,000 ISIS soldiers would be in the millions.

In fact, if you estimate the number of all terrorists in all groups in the world, you get roughly 184,000. That means out of all Muslims in existence, less than 0.02 percent are “terrorists.” I would assume Christianity has similar to lesser numbers in extremist sects.

What does all of this mean? It means that the media and movies like “American Sniper” are only placating the ignorance that exists in hatred towards Islam. Holding hatred for a religion, be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism or any and all is completely ridiculous. You want to convince me that Clint Eastwood directed a film about a self-proclaimed Islamophobic “war hero” who killed over 160 Iraqis with no agenda behind it at all? Our strings are being pulled — or it’s being attempted.

What about Boko Haram? The Nigerian Islamic terrorist group has murdered literally thousands of innocents, yet the U.S. media gives this group virutally no attention. Why? Is it easier for Americans to identify an enemy from Iraq and Syria than a country in Africa?

You’re being played. Your chances of dying in a terrorist attack amount to about 1 in 20 million. Please do not give into the “threat” of ISIS or the need for military involvement. There are some horrific atrocities taking place in that region, but it’s not just ISIS, and the problem has roots in our meddling and involvement in Iraq in the first place to look for non-existent weapons of mass destruction. It is known that it was the Iraq War that would essentially spawn ISIS as we know them now.

Don’t give in to media hype, or the alleged “need” for our presence there. U.S. “presence” only means more groups like ISIS in the future. I even wonder if this might not be what the powers want — to keep us away from the real issues that plague this nation, to keep as many Americans as possible in a bigoted mindset towards Islam, and brew up a sort of new holy war. We’re smarter and more informed than this. Don’t get swallowed into the paranoia. Before we label ourselves Christian, Muslim, white, black, rich or poor, let’s just be humans, first.